eBay Inc. Social Innovation: Our Impact Over Two Years

By: eBay Staff

eBay and PayPal were founded on the premise that we could use our businesses to empower people and progress around the world. This shared belief is part of what brought us together, guided our growth, and enabled us to drive meaningful change for millions of people over the last 13 years.

Our commitment to driving positive social and environmental impact is core to who we are and, over the last several years, we’ve worked hard to formalize it. In 2012, we developed a Social Innovation strategy and set three-year goals across three focus areas: Creating Economic Opportunity, Enabling Greener Commerce, and Powering Giving. And in the years since, we’ve continued to refine our strategy and accelerate our impact.

Today we’re releasing our second and final Social Innovation Annual Update. With the upcoming separation of eBay and PayPal, we’re closing our current Social Innovation goals and developing new strategies to guide the social impact activities of both companies going forward. Although we’re closing these goals sooner than expected, we’ve made significant progress and have laid a strong foundation from which both companies can build. Contained within the Annual Update is progress on our goals along with some highlights of our overall accomplishments, including:

- Since 2012, eBay Foundation has helped over 7 million people living in poverty get access to more affordable products and services, 2 million more than what we set out to achieve.

- We’ve increased the amount of electricity coming from cleaner sources globally from 5.6% in 2012 to 14.2% in 2014.

- In 2014, we generated $5.7 billion for charitable organizations through our giving programs and platforms, a 54% increase over 2012.

You can download the full Social Innovation Annual Update atop this page. As eBay and PayPal move forward in their next chapters, we remain committed to using each as anengine for driving positive social and environmental impact.